Ologies with Alie Ward - Proptology (THEATER & FILM PROPS) with Jay Duckworth

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

Real skulls. Fake pistols. Vegan steaks. Onstage bonfires. Cursed productions. Industry secrets and more with the world’s most lovable and beloved prop master, Professor Jay Duckworth aka @Proptologist on TikTok. A veteran of stage and screen and now an adjunct professor at Pace University, Jay chats about props vs. wardrobe vs. set design, how he keeps tracks of the thousands of items used to make a set feel real, what it was like to work on Hamilton from the very beginning, a prop master’s tool belt, design heroes, the importance of art -- and sanitation workers -- and why you should always carry a Moleskein notebook. Also: his 3 tips to having a long and successful career. Get ready to fall in love. Follow Professor Duckworth at: https://www.tiktok.com/@proptologist twitter.com/jayduck9 Instagram.com/jayduck9 His website is: https://www.proptologist.com/ Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ProfDuckworths Redbubble shop: https://www.redbubble.com/people/proptologist/shop A donation went to The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, Inc., NIWRC.org More links at www.alieward.com/ologies/proptology Sponsors of the show: www.alieward.com/ologies-sponsors To become a patron: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, pins, totes, shirts, etc. Follow Ologies on Instagram or Twitter Follow Alie Ward on Instagram or Twitter.com Sound editing by Steven Ray Morris & Jarrett Sleeper Music by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, it's your friend's dog who's more affectionate with you than your own dog. But it's fine. It's totally fine. Alliward. Back with a magical historical artsy episode of ologies that is not about butts, okay? So settle down. So today we're talking with a longtime theater legend, a prop master, a veteran of stage and screen who has captured our hearts very recently having started a TikTok account under

the handle, Proptologist. So in the last four months, a quarter of a million people have followed him to hear tales of props of yore and fabrication techniques and honestly some really solid life lessons. He's a gift to the world, quite honestly. And he spent years as the head of props for New York City's public theater. He is an adjunct professor of props design at Pace University, and he is wonderful. Really quick before we get into it, thanks to everyone supporting at patreon.com slash ologies.

Thanks to everyone wearing merch from ologiesmerch.com and everyone subscribing and telling a friend or social networks about the show. And for leaving reviews such as this piping hot fresh one left for me to read like a creep by reviewer X who wrote, very angry five stars, I hate this show. It's so good. And now I have no idea what to be. But seriously, all the speakers on this podcast are super passionate and it makes listening to it all the more comforting.

I still have the whole predicament of not knowing what to do. Thanks, dad word. Matt face. Happy to not help. Gitto. Who knew jobs and passion could be so interesting? Probably this guy. So speaking of proptology from the word prop from the word property from a 14th century

word meaning things subject to ownership. Now I did not know proptology existed until a Twitter user by the name of Rose alerted me and I said, boy, howdy, hot damn, get me this proptologist. And Google was like, did you need a butt doctor? And I was like, no, proptologist.com. Let's just go there. We scheduled the time and got to know each other a little while he grabbed his headphones and side note.

While he did, I happened to look out the window and spot a hummingbird nest. Do you see that little loving in the nest? That's a fucking hummingbird's nest. So this episode is blessed and holy. So this week we have one of the world's most beloved and only self proclaimed proptologists. Here to chat about everything from stage curses to weathering antiques, thrifting, sanitation workers, Broadway legends, Hamilton trivia, museum backstages, tool belts, fake food hacks, internships, and why the arts should be the last place with a high fence legend icon,

Weedy-Peedy, master of properties, national treasure, and professional proptologist, Professor J. Duckworth. Hello, how are you? I am so well. First thing I'll have you do is say your name and your pronouns. I'm J. Duckworth. My pronouns are he, him, and I was born in the Illini native territory in Missouri. You're a proptologist.

Born and raised. Do you have any idea how many interviews start off with me being like, and you're this and this, and they're like, I guess. Well, I invented the term. I know. And therefore, I can stake a claim in it. And actually, when I got my website, there was a guy in Florida who had proptologists.com because he did props on boats.

So I got .net, and I was just waiting and waiting, and I would check almost every day. And after about four years, he dropped it, and I bought it immediately. And I paid for it for like 10 years. Oh, that makes me so happy. When was the first time someone called you a proptologist, or you called yourself that? I did it honestly because I needed a, no one thinks, okay, no one thinks about props. You start the show by getting your script and your director, and the director looks for a set designer who sets up the entire thing, and then you get a costume designer.

Once you have those two major things, you look for your lighting and then sound. And the last person at the last minute is props. And it's usually all the budgets already gone by then. So I had to think of some way to stand out. And it was such an incredible play on words that I put it on my card. And I would always introduce myself was a, hello, I'm RJ Duckworth, proptologist. And people would be like, what the, and people actually would come to me in different theaters that I'd work at and be like, this is the guy, that's the guy, you got to make it.

So. Oh God. So you ended up making a name for yourself by making a name for your job, kind of? Literally, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love marketing. Marketing is so, it's just wonderful science.

Well, you know, I became aware of you because someone saw your website and they tweeted at me and they're like, you have to have him on. And immediately I was like, that's a hard yes, there's no way I can't talk to this guy. And I started looking into some of the things that you've worked on. And I'm just going to make you rattle off some of your credits, stage and screen. Can you tell me some of your favorite things you've worked on? The there, I mean, I got to start out of the gate with, you know, Hamilton is the big

elephant in the room because I've worked, I've worked in my career. I've worked with some of the greatest masters and theater royalty since the Golden Age of Theater. I was so lucky to work with Arthur Lawrence when he was still alive and Sondheim, you know, I worked with both of them on the same show. Oh, yeah, it was insane. And the first time I did a show, I propped it was Arthur Lawrence wrote the book. He also was directing it and it was starring Cheetah Rivera.

Arthur Lawrence, side note, legendary playwright of West Side Story, the musical that launched Cheetah Rivera, who played Anita in it in the two collaborated for years. And yes, Jay got to work with them, bananas. This is my first pop gig. Oh, yeah. So that was that was nuts. So Hamilton comes along and it's just this incredible, gorgeous thing. We did a workshop for it to bring backers and then everything.

And at the end of the workshop, I was crying and I walked up to our artistic director and he said, yeah, it's that good. And I was like, it's not that. It's like I've never been a part of something that I knew was going to change our entire industry. Oh my God. And working with people that I've worked with, I, you know, it's like, oh, this is going to be really good.

Oh, this is going to be good. This is, you know, this is a breakthrough for trans people, you know, this is a musical about trans people. This is, you know, this is really great, you know, brother size, you know, Terrell McCranny. Terrell McCranny, side note, won an Oscar in 2017 for Best Adapted Screenplay for the film Moonlight, which was based on his play in Moonlight, Black Boys Look Blue. So Jay gets to dress the sets and craft the objects that bring these stories to life. But we were on the topic of Hamilton.

Yes. This was just, because it was so Shakespeare, I'm sorry, I'm rattling on, I'm so sorry. No, no, no, no, no, I'm all ears. I'm all ears. I saw it on, I mean, I saw it in New York, I waited in line for six hours. Oh my God. Yeah. So like I'm right there with you.

What did you think? Oh, I loved it. I loved it. I was bawling. I mean, I went by myself, sat on the pavement for six hours. The person in line in front of me was the last person to get a ticket and then a harried father with three small kids walked up to the line and said, someone can have this at face value if you want to come in with me.

And I was like, I'll take it. And I went in with him and his three kids. I think he must have gone through a very recent divorce and the other parent was not present. And so essentially his daughter fell asleep on my shoulder. We were way up in the nosebleeds and I watched his kid while he went out for a smoke break. I think people must have thought I was his wife, but yeah, it was absolutely worth it. I got it for $99 and I wept through most of it. Hamilton Dorks, it's okay if you cried.

Also I think about that guy a lot and I hope his family is okay. I'm going to cry again. But the reason I loved it and I'll get off this in a second is it's Shakespearean. It's our history plays done in the verse and songs of the time we live in, which is exactly, I mean, if you look back at John Gay and the beggars opera, boom, that's it. And if you look at all of the classical plays by Shakespeare, it's the same thing. So yeah, I work at Shakespeare in the park and I work in a lot of different Shakespeare shows and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, I had my thumb in.

A rock opera of sorts about the guy on the $20 bill. So historical in nature. Jackson's on the 20, right? There's a lot of them. There's just a lot of fun ones. I mean, what was the, I'm so curious what the first prop you ever started making. I mean, were you like elementary school, middle school, high school, theater nerd, like where did it start?

It started when I was way little because I would steal the aluminum foil and I'd make knights on the horseback out of them and my mom was just like, what is wrong with you? We're little kids. The McDonald's lids had the different characters pressed into the plastic and she was an artist. So I'd ask her to borrow acrylics and I would paint those. And she was an artist and she helped revive the Mississippi Valley folk art movement in Missouri and my father was a construction worker. He was a pipe fitter.

So I learned all my art from my mom and I learned all my construction skills from my father. So I really honest to God was being trained to be a prop person since I was a kid. So I think it was Halloween stuff. Halloween has really got what got me in. Oh, I never thought about that being like not only a portal for souls and spirits, but also just for industries and artists. Gateway drug.

Halloween is literally the gateway drug. It makes the second amount of money than Christmas, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of things to acquire for it. What kind of costumes did you have? Did you have like gory face falling off ones or did you have like, I am, yeah, in full chain mail I made out of?

Oh, no, no, no. No, I would do zombies and I would do vampires and stuff like that because my mom really encouraged me. My parents really encouraged me. I'm really lucky. So she would buy me makeup kits and I would learn how to like put makeup on and, you know, because she was an artist, like I said, she taught me about highlights. She taught me about shadows and color mixing.

And so I would do friends in the neighborhood and my dad and mom would set up a little haunt and this is the 70s, you know? So it was just like a screened in porch that we had hang like curtains on and like my mom would dress up like a witch, you know? So it was like, you know, so that's where, you know, that's where, you know, so I learned how to do props from there, you know, just like the fun stuff around the house. When did people start giving you money for it and what was that like to have a paid gig? Oh, God, the first time I ever got money, money for it was when I sent something out

on tour and that was the first time I ever got residuals. But as an apprentice, I worked at Berkshire Theatre Festival under my mentor, Alan Cutler, who teaches at Rutgers University now. But come to find out he was an ex-Benedictine monk and he taught me everything about history. So I was getting... Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. It was nuts.

It was nuts. So I worked at the Berkshire Theatre Festival and I just fell in love with it because it was all the nerd stuff that I needed. It was history, it was carpentry and it was artistry and a little bit of witchcraft thrown in, you know? Yeah. Because we were doing, you know, we're doing like... I think it was the Scottish play.

Quick aside. So this is the Shakespearean play that rhymes with Bicameth. And according to the Royal Shakespeare Company, the bard lifted a real spell from some actual witches and put it in the play and the witches were like, canst thou not though? And it's said to be a cursed production with weird sudden deaths and accidents happening in some historical runs. So you don't utter the play's name in the theater, but that is where Professor Duckworth fell in love with proptology.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh my God. Yes, you can't say that, but you know what it is. No, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Uh-huh. Got it. And, you know, I'm so curious.

This is obviously, you know, not the sharpest question, but what exactly is a prop? What is a prop? No, that's a brilliant question. Okay. Like what's set? What's prop? What's wardrobe? How...

I know it's like unionized, so there's gotta be some lines. How do you determine? Well, there is no prop union. Ah! Yeah. Please. Ali? Please.

Yeah. Don't even get me started. Uh, but picture, and I always use this, I use this when I lecture, and I use this with my class when I teach. It's if you move into a new apartment, anything you bring into that apartment to make it yours is a prop. And then there's a mix between costumes and props, which is called prop stumps. Uh-huh.

And that is if I give... If a dad is given a tie in one act, act one, scene one, and he's never wears it, that's a prop. The box, the tie, the tissue paper, that's all a prop. If the dad wears it act one, scene two, then it becomes a prop stum, because we have to have a double for that prop, so it never leaves the box, and the other one is rigged so that it could be easily put on between scenes. Ah, that's so genius.

Oh, yeah, it's crazy, because if you try to think about how much theater is, and one of my friends asked me, he's like, why does theater cost this much? And I was like, look at your clothes. I was like, how much is that belt? How much are those pants? How much is this? How much is that? And I said, this is just this scene.

Remember this morning, we were wearing something different. And then when we went out, we had to eat something. So it's like, it's all those environments, all those different outfits all cost something new. And then they have to be augmented. Yeah. Well, are there doubles for all props? No, but there are things that are called perishables.

And when we did Fun Home, the musical Fun Home. Fun Home, if you're not familiar, is the first Broadway musical with a lesbian protagonist, and it was based on a story by Alison Bechtel, for whom the Bechtel test of talking female movie characters is named. Fun fact, Fun Home. The newspaper had to be replaced every other day, because if you start folding a newspaper over and over, the audience is going to see that that is, that's an old newspaper. And if anything's eaten, that's a perishable.

If there's a glass that breaks or anything like that, because you have to create the illusion. There is a, a tip top that I did of us doing intelligent homosexuals guide to the scriptures by Tony Kushner. And we had to destroy a wall every night. Oh my God. And we have. How? Yeah.

We'll see. That's the thing. It was a perishable wall. We had 18 walls in prep because we lost five in a weekend because Friday night show two on Saturday and two on Sunday. That was, that was pretty crazy. And how, how long do you get to work on things? When you are going through a script and you're going through initial meetings and you're

going, well, you're going to need a glass here, you're going to need lipstick here. Like how do you track those? Do you have a moleskin? Do you have an Excel sheet? Like how do you remember? I always keep a moleskin on me and, and I asked me to tell you that story because it's, it's it's part of my teaching. But I want to hear.

Oh yeah. It's okay. I'll jump on it. I'll jump on and then I'll get back to that. When we were doing into the woods, into the woods by the by a Sondheim musical based on a bunch of brother's grim fairy tales. And Jay was propping it before it went into production on the film starring someone named Meryl Streep.

No big deal. So they were working out the kinks with a live audience. And one of my interns was under the stage at the coffee station with Steve Sondheim. And he talked for a second or two and he came up to me and I was like, how cool is that? And he's like, what? I was like, do you know who you were just talking to? And he was like, no, no, I think he's on the board or something. I was like, Kevin, that was Steven Sondheim.

Oh my God. Oh my God. And he's just like his head just hung. And from that point on, I had all of my interns and all of my students carry around a Moleskine notebook. And if they ever hear a name or they ever hear of a theater or a writer or anybody like that, they have to create a baseball card for that person. Like print out a picture so that they never miss the opportunity again.

I mean, we know who the big stars are, but if you don't know the players in the field, you're lost and you'll never get that opportunity again. How many of you are buying Moleskine notebooks today? All of you? I'm just checking. Oh my God. But I'll read a script and create an Excel sheet and mark off all the regular prompts in yellow, all the perishables in red, and all situational things in blue.

So let's say if somebody says Ali is a really ritzy, you know, as part of the script, I'll understand how I have to dress your apartment. If it's a Wednesday versus a Thursday, if it's a spring versus winter, how many coats you'll have, what kind of dressing you'll have around the apartment. So you have to know all of those things as the three different circles of consciousness. If the note says Ali is surrounded by clean, unfolded laundry and yesterday's coffee mugs, that's even more props to acquire. It's potentially more expensive than being ritzy.

Who knew? Where does he get all of his stuff? Does he start from scratch? Is there a Narnia wardrobe closet just filled with nouns? A lot of theaters have their own prop room, and the public has two different prop rooms. One is for hand props and the other one's for bigger furniture in the building, in the building. And so you have a basic set of things that you can hold on to, but I created something

called the Prop Summit. After my first year of doing props, I invited all the prop masters over as a thank you. And we realized this is something that we didn't know each other. So we started a yearly thing, and then all the different props shops, like the Juilliard shop, the NYU shop, all of us started loaning stuff to each other. So we tripled our storage, and yeah, and it brought the price down. So we were able to contact each other through emails and be like, hey, you did this. Do you have this?

Because no one wants to reinvent the wheel. And there's also this other organization called SPAM, which is Society of Props, Artisans, and Masters. And it's all around the United States. And when we throw out questions to each other about, hey, who has been shot in the head before? It's fake. So you have to find that.

And once you find out those different tricks and techniques, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. How much of what you do is collecting, cataloging, styling versus fabricating and aging? A lot of it is dependent upon the script. If it's a new play, we'll usually be able to get away with getting stuff around thrift stores or heading up Craigslist. There's something called KRRB, which is curb. Or if you have to make something totally new and then just distress it.

So you've made something new, and that always kind of breaks my heart that we have to beat it down and strip it to make it authentic. Because the greatest thing about the greatest prop masters, you will never see. You will never see their hand. You will never see where they've been. And that is our goal because we want to be seamless. You just want to be so atmospheric that people feel like they're absolutely in that moment and in that time where they're not noticing things around them.

Absolutely. And you put in things from eras and things that are iconic. So they are emotionally drawn in before the audience, before the actors even hit the stage. A piece of duct tape versus a piece of lace on the back of a chair or the side of a chair says volumes about the person that occupies that chair. Does that mean that there's something maybe from Goodwill in Staten Island that made it on stage to Hamilton? Someone doesn't realize their candles, their brass candlestick holder made it onto Tony

award-winning play. Yes. What are some things that you've had to source? Well, there's this great place in New York, and I swear to God, every community needs this. Every big community needs this. It's called Materials for the Arts, and it was run by Harriet Taub for the longest time. This magical place was started by sanitation workers, New York sanitation folks, just saving

the arts. And they saw so much stuff from the city being thrown away that they said we have to establish where kids or nonprofits can go and pick up this material. And it's buttons from the garment district, fabrics from the garment district, books that people were throwing out, chairs, offices that would close, and they would just throw things out. So they established that, and then anyone who was a nonprofit, or if you were a school, or if you're an arts organization, could go to that.

And we use that a lot. That's great. And the thing is, as soon as we get done with that, we put it right back into Materials for the Arts. And what's her name, Annie Hathaway? That's Ann Hathaway, to those of us who have not gotten to work with her. The one-person show was grounded at the Public Theater. And according to some still images that I creeped on the internet of the 2015 run, she

appears on stage in a jumpsuit under stark lighting. She did a show and the sand in her show because she played an Israeli Air Force pilot. All of that sand we sent to Materials for the Art as a note saying, hey, we have this, and it went into a park in Brooklyn. Oh, that's great. So all these kids are running around in sand, Annie Hathaway did a show. Oh, my God, I love that. And what about your work in New York on stage versus when you're working on set?

How is that different for a proptologist? I've done pilots and music videos. And here's the best way I can explain the experience. Your first day on set is the most exciting day of your life. The rest of them are the most boring things you'll ever have because you have, it's six hours of sitting and 30 minutes of panic, pure panic. Hurry up and wait. And you have to be ready for anything.

Like if somebody's like, I want to hold a baby at this point, you got to have a truck that has like a bunch of different props on it. So it's really, you have to plan so much and you have to have enough people around. So no one's waiting on you because you don't want money hanging hanging. You be the department that's hanging everybody up. Do the props have to differ in terms of how authentic they look? If something is seen from 100 meters away versus if there's going to be a close-up on it? Honestly, it doesn't matter to me.

And it doesn't matter to a lot of the people that I work with because we feel that amount of detail is absolutely important because the actor sees it. They're out there, no, no, they're out there naked. And we have to support them as much as possible. The great, yeah, it's so, so you have to do that amount of detail. J.O. Saunders, the great Shakespearean actor, I gave him a pipe one time and he's like, oh, this is nice. And I said, yeah, I noticed that your character is left-handed.

So that's why it's burned on this side because when you would light it, you would turn it this way and use your dominant hand instead of everybody else doing it that way. He was just like, why did you think about that? And I was like, I have to, I have to because this is this, I have to support you. That makes me want to cry. That was so beautiful. Like that just gave me full body goosebumps. That's amazing.

Oh, yeah. Detail, you have to love what you do in order to go into that kind of detail for the work, I imagine. Oh, yeah, absolutely. The stuff that I do, even for myself, is to keep my skills up, but also to keep my eyes sharp. What does your workshop look like? Very tidy. Are we talking absolute chaos?

Okay, yeah. I couldn't find my, I couldn't find my headset. Say no more. You, you answered. Oh, your HD is going to be like crazy bad. Yeah, it's, it's, my desk is good, but I recently got into the folk art of the Maori and the sepik people of Palpa New Guinea. And so my entire room looks like a Victorian gentleman's club.

And I use my, a section of my bedroom because you have no space as my office, you know, and as my workplace. Yeah. You're based in New York. New York City. Yeah. Where are you from originally? Missouri.

Missouri. Yeah, I am a little farm boy. Well, not little. I was, I'm always been a big corn fed guy. I was the only eighth grader with a full beard. But yeah, Missouri, small town. It was 3000 people and there was 61 people in my graduating class. And I think I got into theater and I think I got into the arts to play up the intellectual side

because being queer in Missouri in the 70s and 80s was very dangerous. So I use that persona to hide who I was and protect who I was. And theater, I mean, come on. What a better place to hide. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no one suspects a thing. Yeah, exactly.

When, when you got to New York, what was that like? I mean, did you just go down the steps of a greyhound with a piece of wheat in your mouth in a battered suitcase? What was that like? Yeah. I carried a knife with me my first time I went to New York and I walked the entire, I walked from, God, I think it was like 49th street all the way down to the village because I was afraid to take the subway.

He got used to it, obviously. The city also changed over the years and he is perfectly at home. But with COVID, you may have noticed that life theater was a little bit impacted. So he left his trade to teach at Pace University, which has campuses in New York and West Chester and online, which is great because the only name better than J. Duckworth is Professor Duckworth. Let's be honest. I teach props and theater history for design and another one, which is called Creative Collaborative. And, and, and the other thing is I've had such an advantage working with some of the best people

in the entire world that if I did not start teaching, it would be a moral failing of mine. No, seriously, my father always said the price you pay for living in a good community is community service and you have to give back. And the last thing that theater needs is a 50 year old white man running a theater department, you know, like a props department, you know, so it's, it's other people's time. Okay, I'm going to make us go to listener questions because we have one billion of them and they're so good. So crazy.

Like so many, it's nuts. And so can I lightning around you and we'll just like try and answer as many as we can. Do you have a bell or anything that you can shut me off at the time? I love him and I never want to stop talking to him. But we do have to take a quick break to chat about sponsors in the show who help us donate to a cause of theologist choosing in this week. Professor Duckworth would like it to go to the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center, Incorporated, and IWRC.

It's a native led nonprofit organization dedicated to ending violence against native women and children and the N I W R C provides national leadership in ending gender based violence in tribal communities by lifting up the collective voices of grassroots advocates and offering culturally grounded resources, technical assistance and training. So a donation was made to www.niwrc.org in Jay's honor. So thanks to Jay and these sponsors. Okay, your proptology questions. You wonderful patrons at patreon.com slash ology supplied me with a torrent of great

questions, which we will now aim at his beautiful face. Okay, Jessica Jansen wants to know what makes us truly. You actually, we actually said that at the exact same time. What makes us that truly magical? The harmonics. Harmonics in a set make it magical. And that's when you work in a play that you have sets and lights and costume all congruous and working together to create just an emotional environment.

One of the greatest set designers out there that I love is David Rockwell. This guy, David Rockwell designed a bunch of Nobu restaurants and the Dolby theater where the Oscars are held. Plus did the sets for the theatrical runs of Rocky Horror Picture Show and Legally Blonde and Hairspray and Kinky Boots. He won a Tony in 2016 for best scenic design for a musical college she loves me and has been nominated for like six other Tonys. And he might just be eating a croissant walking right past you, this kind of guy.

And he's an architect and he does theater for fun. But his stuff is sublime, you know. And Ricardo Hernandez, who is the head of design after Ming-Chi Li stepped down at Yale. But his parents were opera people. And so his stuff is clean line and very Japanese. And it's just, the thing is, when you go out there, you have to strip away everything that is not for the story. And you have to distill your style down so that people see that thumbprint.

And once you see that thumbprint, that's how you get your voice in theater. David Korn's is the same thing. Danielle Worley is a queen of it. So yeah, it's the harmony in which you interact with everyone from the audience to the stage ends. So Ming-Chi Li, Ricardo Hernandez, whose parents used to be an opera, David Korn's, Danielle Worley. I really love that Jay is just giving props to so many people.

And links to all these folks will be up on my website. But patron Rainbow Warrior, I hope that answers your questions of who some of his heroes are. And that's all smiles and sunshine. But let's talk about annoying shit. Some patrons, including Anna G, Rafaela Litvin, Kyle Pollack, Samantha Mitz, Ellen Skelton, Alexandria Gartman, first time question askers Little Bee and Catherine Trinkline. And Stephanie and 1,000 other people wanted to know what is the worst prop that you've ever had to make or put together?

Is there one that's just on your shit list so hard? I will always remember in a summer stock that I had to make a cow hide trunk and it was out of cow hide. And we had no air conditioning. I had to do it outside. I was sweating like crazy. The director loved it. He's like, can you make it look like pony?

And I was like, I imagine if I take a trimmer to it, I could. So I was trimming this like with a hair trimmer outside. And I was sweating and the wind was pushing this cow hair all over my body. And it was sticking to me. And it was the most gross thing ever. And I was just like, I can't believe this is what I want to do for a living. I can just picture it. Like if you had like a date roll in coconut.

Yes, 100%. That's what I looked like. Oh, God. Just like a human lint roller and sweat and bovine stubble. And yet he remained just so in love with the field. So now this next question was a super popular one. It was asked by just a disco full of patrons, including Ariel Van Zandt, Brooke Ratliff, Dave Chuster, first time question asker,

Brendan Wood-Taylor, Dan Hayes, Manuela Quintero, Sylvia T. Ira Gray, Daniel Spence, Cara Cofill, Barry Price, RJ Doge, Wendy Fick, Charlotte Felkegaard, 1,000th Happy Haunt, Bridget Daily, and Sammy Baker wants to know, where does everything go afterward? Like movies that build these super intricate huge sets or plays that go on. What happens? Do they get demolished? Do actors steal them?

Do they go into a landfill? Let's go to your favorite film, Waterworld, where they just blew it up and tried to sink it. And it didn't go under. Oh, really? Oh, you don't know? That was the huge scandal. Oh, they tried to sink it? They blew it up and tried to sink it, and it didn't go under.

So it was stuck there, and they had environmental concerns. So it cost them more to take this thing out. Oh, god. A little foreshadowing to an upcoming maritime archaeology episode about shipwrecks. A lot of stuff goes to prop houses. If you have a prop house, you usually rent a lot of stuff that you need specialties. So it'll go right back to that prop house, especially the couches, the furniture, the dressing.

All that stuff usually goes back. The sets usually get trashed, and that's all for film. Broadway, they will throw it out. It'll either go into container and go either to New Jersey or Connecticut for a tour. Or if it's at the end, it'll all get thrown out in dumpsters. Yes, props, everything. So that's why a lot of actors take some things that they've worked with. Do they ever auction it off at all?

We did with two guns from Hamilton for the Equity Fights Aids, Broadway Bears, Fundraiser, where we took some props. And it was the two guns, and I asked Lynn to sign them. And they went for something like $3,000, you know. Oh, I bet, yeah. Oh, my god. I looked this up, and yes, they did go for several grand. And if you missed out, but you have too much money and you're in possession,

just a heads up that two actual guns belonging to Alexander Hamilton go up for auction on May 14th and are expected to fetch between $1 and $4 million. But if that's too rich and potentially haunted for your blood. And then there's also the Broadway flea market, where a lot of props and costume pieces are sold to people who come out to the flea. And I recommend that once we get out of COVID, just to go and be a part of that. Because you can meet all the backstage people. You can meet the stars.

You can meet the talent. And you can also meet the people who make this new, who bring this stuff together. Like Buse Bickley, who's an incredible prop person. Faye Arnon Trusco, who's great. You know, yeah, you get to meet all kinds of wonderful people. Links to these other legends will be on my website. Mm, uh, Jessica Roth wants to know, kind of on that note, what's the weirdest prop you've had go missing?

Have you, do you ever have things that get stolen and you're like, ah, I need this Ming vase? Well, uh, we've had it. Okay. I'm sorry to harp on Hamilton, but this is the greatest story. No, I love it. Okay. During burn, there is the lantern. I hope that you burn.

And they're inside of that lantern is two sets of matches that are two matches that are taped together. It's so that when it struck, the one strikes the other one and it's guaranteed to light. You can never, never, never just send out one match. And then you take and we took a striker pad and put it on there as well. So if that goes out on stage, they can go ahead and light it again. Well, Philippa Sue, who originated the role, Elizabeth Seiler, it's a pleasure to meet you. It was her birthday and somebody came backstage and grabbed the lighter that lights the candle and took it downstairs for afterwards for her birthday to light the candles on her birthday cake.

And poor Will Blacksmith was just like, Oh my God, where is the lighter? Yeah. And Philippa was like, let's just use the matches on side. And he was like, no, no, no, we can't. We have to use these. It was there at the beginning when he did his, uh, pre-check. It was just somebody worked by and was like, Oh yeah, I'll need this later. Oh no.

Oh yeah. It's, it's crazy. Did it work out in time? Oh, totally. Totally. Okay, good. Will kept, I think he keeps a lighter on him to burn the ends of ropes. He's an incredible professional.

So yeah. Oh God. That makes me nervous just thinking about the person who didn't realize that they almost ripped it. Oh my God. Yeah. On Broadway, that was a Broadway. You know, it's like, it's like people paid, you know, thousands of dollars.

And it's kind of like. Okay. Julie McDonald had a great, great question. At what point did movies and theater switch from using real person bones to fake bones? Maybe they didn't. We all know the story of Pirates of the Caribbean right after all. Well, not only Pirates of the Caribbean, but there was also, what's the one, Poltergeist used real bones.

No. Fo, real. They used real bones in the scene with the pool where all the skeletons were coming up. Where did they get all those bones? I have, I honestly have no idea. I looked it up and they got them from Carolina Biological Supply, which was an anatomy supplier for medical schools. Nowadays, folks use plastic ones, although it's completely legal to buy a human skeleton.

And there's one at theboneroom.com. It'll run you about $6,000. That's a big no thanks for me. I'm good without one. Thank you. But I know that was like the last big thing. There is someone who donated their skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company to use as Hamlet. Now, I don't know if he was a former actor or something like that,

but I've always loved that story. Yeah, that's pretty dope. This skull in question belongs to Andrei Tchaikovsky, a Polish composer, not to be confused with the Russian composer Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky was like, please, please use my skull on stage. It's going to be rad. It's going to be so cool. I'm so into it.

I'm going to be dead, but I'm going to love it. And it has been rad. A little spooky, but certainly brings a vibe to the show. Maggie Kinney wrote in and said, I have a friend named Zach who wants to donate their body, not to science, but to a movie set when they died so that it could be used during the movie for something really cool, like being blown up. Is that even possible? Can you even legally use a dead body as a movie prop?

And Rene Fuentes says, this is the weirdest question I have read in a long time, and I'm pretty sure Ali would be able to find the answer. I don't know about that. Can you donate your actual corpse? I don't know if that's legal. Well, you have to deal with your state laws. And don't ask me how I know this, but you have to deal with your own state laws. And if they have a composting for a body, because there are sometimes really strict laws

about how you get buried. And some people go with natural barrels where they put themselves in wicker baskets. And now there's the ones where you can be part of a tree. So it totally depends on the laws of each state and how comfortable the theater is with you donating it. You could get a lot of trouble for desecrating a corpse. Yeah. So definitely get something right.

I hear, I hear. Yeah. Allegedly. Air quotes, air quotes. That American Claire says, I love learning about prop food things like the chip bags that don't make noise. Is there anything food related that you've had to hack? Oh, that's Scott drop and roll.

He was just did a TikTok on that. Scott drop and roll. He's a prop movie guy. It's difficult to record dialogue over loud chip bags. The prop chip bags made out of vinyl. I mean, the vinyl bag still makes a little bit of noise, but compared to regular chips, the crinkle when you wrinkle doesn't stink. And he's just incredible.

If you anybody who's listening to this, please go follow him. There is. And it's my favorite story. And it's John Lithgow wanted a steak for when he was playing King Lear. And we were trying to figure out maybe we could do tofu or maybe we could do something like that or something that wouldn't because it had to be outside. It was the second park show. Your average was 90 degree temperatures during the day.

And you had to have that waiting out for to go on stage. Polina, my assistant on the show, brought in a watermelon and we started cutting it up. And I noticed that the water on the plate reminded me of blood. And I said, could you hand me that icing tent? And she gave me a caramel icing tent and I fended out with some water and I made a steak out of it. And we went up to the rehearsal the next day at lunchtime and showed him the steak. I had the greatest compliment I've ever had in my entire life because John Lithgow saw it. He was just like, oh my God, I hope my performance is as good as this steak.

And I got a call from my brother saying, do you know that John Lithgow is on the chew and he just dropped your name like bull first and last name. A couple of years ago, I did King Lear in the park. And there was a scene where King Lear eats heartily with his knights. And I wanted a big piece of meat. This was medieval England. So I asked the prop master, this brilliant prop guy named Jay Duckworth, get me meat that I can actually eat on stage.

And he invented stage meat made out of watermelon with food coloring. Oh yeah, such a gracious human being. Oh, that's wonderful. Is that something that's used now kind of regularly to imitate steak? No. When he did Beatrix at dinner, he had the crew call me because they were making steaks and he was like, no, no, no, you need to call Jay Duckworth at the public theater and find out what he did.

And so one of the chefs joke is like, that's a wonderful way to freak out vegetarians. Yes. Actually, that brings me to one question that I have to find now. Elmical asks, have you ever done any great April Fool's jokes using props? Dine to know. Never on stage. Never on stage because like I said, it's a sacred space. Oh yeah, yeah.

But off stage. There may have been toothpaste inside Oreos that were left out on a table. So maybe, and that's all I can say legally. Hey, it's not not edible. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Just odd. They're mint.

Yeah, very, very minty. They're your peppermint mania. Scala Borealis wants to know. What great name. A great name, right? I'm not sure if you'll know and I have no idea what this is about, but where is Russell Crowe's jackstrap and how did they lose it? Is this about a jockstrap?

Did not get lost. It is actually in, his jockstrap was bought by John Oliver and it went to the last blockbuster that's still open in Alaska. It was up for an auction. So is this weird that I know? Yes, yes. That is so long. I'm so glad you know that

because I have no, I wasn't sure if a jackstrap was a typo or if that was something that had nothing to do with jockstrap. No, it was the jockstrap and he sold it and John Oliver bought it and donated it to the last blockbuster up in Alaska. This jockstrap in question was worn in the 2005 film Cinderella Man. It has its own Wikipedia page and out of pure celestial cruelty, there are no pictures of it on its own Wikipedia page. Somebody fix that.

But elsewhere, photos show Russell Crowe's jockstrap is leathery and weathered, kind of like Antiques Roadshow after dark. And yeah, John Oliver bought it for seven Gs and then Russell Crowe donated that amount to the Australian Zoo to fund the John Oliver Koala Chlamydia Award. But all of this merriment just was not enough to keep the lights on at the Alaska blockbuster. So everything, all the mementos and everything were shipped to the real last blockbuster, which is in Bend, Oregon. But somehow the jockstrap went missing.

So who knows? Who knows? Only the jockstrap. Oh my God. Oh, we have so many good questions. Okay. Ali Rosser asked, do you have a selection of easy break bottles in your house for smashing over the heads of your guests?

And are they really made out of spun sugar like in our dreams? They used to be. They're now made out of a polymer or they're made out of a resin that's very thin. And we have a lot at our theater from different shows that have closed and like Sting's last ship closed. And we, because of the network that we set up through the props on it, we were able to get them. And our promise to the community was that we would hold on to them. If shows off Broadway and off off Broadway needed them, we would donate to them.

So they didn't have to buy them because they're very, very expensive. I bet. Yeah. I looked it up on a prop supply site and a single breakaway beer bottle is $18. And it does not come with any beer. And also just any trick that you do, you have to have a fight choreographer because even with that, you have to hit them in a special way. It's either a pull through or a bounce back and you can't be near the eyes.

So you have to have all of this stuff. And so a fight choreographer with a prop person, we work very much hand in hand. And now they're fight people have also taken on roles, which is just incredible called intimacy coaches because some people are scumbags. I'm just going to say it. And there are people who are not comfortable doing things. So now people are bringing in intimacy coaches. So those scumbag directors and scumbag actors don't take advantage of other people.

Oh, that's great that that started. And it's horrific to think how many times it was needed. You know? Yeah. Yeah. On the topic of danger, Katie, you wants to know if you've ever worked with a dangerous prop that required kind of special handling. Does that happen?

Yes. And I made it. It was a 13 foot guillotine that actually worked. It was a working guillotine. It was for a show called Dedications of the Stuff of Dreams. It was Terrence McNally and Nathan Lane. And it was it was taking place in an old theater like this old theater that they wanted to revamp. You know?

And Terrence McNally told me at the first meeting he was like, if that thing stops, if that thing binds up, our show is dead. And I was like, I was like, hey, that's great. I think it's great that you have me for this project, then, because I will guarantee that it won't happen. And the production manager turns to me afterwards. He's like, that's really great. He's like, what are you going to do?

I was like, I have no idea. But it was when we made it, I calculated the math wrong for the weight of the blade. And the blade, the first time we ran it, the blade broke apart the bottom of the machine and stuck into the floor. Oh, God. And it wasn't even sharp. What is the blade made out of? It was made out of metal.

Oh, geez. We trained everybody. And every night it was padlocked up. That's very smart. Because you know someone's like, can it chop a cantaloupe? And you're like, don't do that, please. Don't have a couple coronas and see what it can chop up. That idea.

So many good questions. OK, I really loved this question. Jason Alexander, you may know him from the producer. Jason Krobach asks, who handles the writing of handwritten notes or letters? Does the actor actually write it? Does the prop master to somebody else? And especially in Hamilton, where are those letters coming from? Such an incredible question.

All of them were handled by props people. And what we did for Hamilton, there was a thing called WRIGHT. And we took Hamilton, Washington, we took all of their letters, all of their script, and you can write letters in their hand. So we not only had documents that we reprinted from, like we had Rochambeau's map of New Jersey. Rochambeau's side note was a French-born Marshal, whose forces helped defeat the British at Yorktown,

whose full name was a real French mouthful of cheese. Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimyur, comme de Rochambeau, which is longer than saying rock-paper-scissors, but backed paper, which rocks. Yeah, so you know how nuts I am. So everything is totally exact. And even the newspaper that announces BERS running for the seat is New York. This really talented young man made it, who was our intern.

But it was all New York news from that month, because we couldn't find the exact newspaper. But it was just nuts. You can go pretty far in it. And when we did Lear, there wasn't a written language in England at the time, but there's tons of notes in King Lear. So we had to use Irish autumn language, which is tree language. And it was an early scratch.

It was horizontal and vertical lines. And I did it on pieces of bark that we just sewed together. So it was an idea of the earliest Chinese books meshed with Irish language in order to create something, because that's a lot of a paradox. It's, you know, our minds fill in those blanks. Yeah. So as long as we give something that is legitimate, that would work in that world, then you're fine.

And what kind of paper are you using to simulate paper from, you know, a few centuries ago? Some of it is printer paper. Just printer paper. Yeah. Some of it was real handmade paper, but it just wouldn't hold up. So we had to augment some of the paper. Here's what I picture.

J. Duckworth. I'm here. I'm working here. Megan Hamilton, just doing these letters, right? Print it up in the right hand and then puts it in a in a pie tin that's filled with coffee and then burns the edges like a treasure map. But I'm pretty sure I'm wrong about some of that stuff. You're absolutely right.

No, there is jokes. We, Eric Hart, who is the the premier scholar on Props, he's written three books. He's just getting his last book out right now. Eric Hart's book was just released this month and it's called Prop Building for Beginners, 20 Props for Stage and Screen. And I will link it on my website. We joke about that, you know, that, you know, hey, if you burn the edges, it makes it look real. Yeah.

Or if you put it in coffee, it makes it look more real. That's a total joke. So we never really do that because it's just you always want to be an archetype. You never want to be a stereotype. Yeah. So do you have a certain like an aging serum that is a mix of a couple different types of paint? See, that's great because no. No, listen, listen.

And it's the same thing like that a lot of people have misconceptions about. In that age, those props would not look like that. They would be new fresh paper. So our preconceived notion of how old they look is because we see them at that point. But we have to realize that these are of that time. Yeah. Haha. Yeah.

See, so it's like when you're organizing your bookshelf and you're like, only the old books were printed on yellowed paper. That's just yellowed paper. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I went to the, I spoke at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia and they gave me a tour of everything and the backstage stuff. In museums, backstage is also known as the collections.

Backstage, theater. I mean, it's, it's, but they gave me a tour and they, the guy who gave me the tour was so annoyed, I think, because I was like, oh my God, is this real? And he's like, yeah, that's, that's real. I was like, are these real? Or is this because I'm so used to making fake stuff. He's like, at one point he was just like, you know, this is a museum. I was like, these are the actual things.

And I was just like, I can't believe that. It was, it was so amazing. I feel like that's like you going back in time at meeting the queen and just being like, that cosplay is amazing. No one would have ever had those beads seriously. Oh God. Annie Goodenough, which I hope is a real last name, but if not, it's a great last name. She should be the crucible.

I know, right? The Crucible, a 1959 Arthur Miller play about the Salem witch trials. And one character is named Sarah Good. In case you're into historical witch fiction, Amy Goodenough, whose name is awesome and who asked. One of my weird TV show pet peeves is when actors are carrying coffee cups and they look empty. Is there an important reason why on stage or on screen? Because you can tell. Oh my God.

Scott Proppenroll invented a system that you can pour into the coffee cups because it has become such. That's also a joke in our community. It's like, you've got to put something in there. Yeah, it's annoying. And it's one of those things, again, where you can't have coffee in it, because it'll stain the costumes should Annie spill. And there's so much equipment around you can't really have water in it. But he did something.

I think it was a resin or something like that. So it had weight. But that is such a hot topic right now. And that actually so legitimizes what we do as prop people that if you look at the Game of Thrones where they had that coffee cup out, how many people saw that, it really made me feel great about the detail that I do because people are that detail oriented. This next one was asked by Rob Hale, Naomi Atkins, Steven Lickman, Sylvia T, and Becky, the sassy seagrass scientist who wrote into Jay Duckworth,

do you love exquisite details and tiny elements of props and scenery that maybe only you and the actors get to see? Such a special part of my college theater magic techie experience. And a few people had questions about what you thought about props having to become more detailed or realistic when it comes to, say, TV or film and high def and 4k versus the theater experience, which is really about being kind of present and in the moment and believing the actor is believing that they're in it. Do you have any thoughts on that at all?

I think that we have all props people have raised their art to a design phase where HDTV and or high definition film and stage is just the same. We all want to get the most detail, the best that we can out there because it is our name and the reputation. And like again, we don't want to be noticed. We will only let you see what we want you to see. So it's very important that we make sure that the address of the actor, of the actor's character is on the checks that they write in the play. That's the detail that we want.

Right. We were talking about coffee cups that were empty. And this made me I have to ask Cassie Lumsden's question. Just how creepy do you think prop babies are? God, the worst, the worst. And we have to get a lot of times we have to get those babies that people buy that are like real looking babies like latex and foam babies that really look like babies and they're wacky. And now we have to do a speaker inside of them so that they have the sound. And sometimes we use remote car parts to make them move.

Nice. Because if you're holding something that is totally, there is no baby in the world unless you swamble that thing. That's not going to wriggle or something like that. Yeah. I was wondering that. I don't know. It was one of those shower thoughts where I remember like a month ago, I was thinking, why don't they make remote control babies that wiggle around? I forgot what I was watching.

But I was watching something where a baby was distractingly small. It essentially was wrapped up like a moth cocoon. Like there was nothing alive there. No. No. There's that famous Bradley Cooper scene, which I still feel so bad for whoever had to just... Again, I think that's one of those situations where it was like, I want the baby in my arms. We don't have a baby. You get a baby. And like within 30 minutes, you either send somebody or a store,

or you pull the baby that you have out of your storage and stock and just be like, this is the one that I never want to use. Just please Google Bradley Cooper, fake baby. It was an American sniper. It hurts. It hurts me so much. Yeah. Oh, I know. I just cringed a thousand cringes saying that. But I have two more questions from... A couple more questions from listeners. Ian Garrett. I think you'll like this question.

Ian Garrett wants to know, what's it like being a freaking national treasure? Duckworth is the best. No joke. I'm having a bit of a moment over here. What? Who is this? This is Ian Garrett. And then another question we have from David Phelps. Oh my goodness, J. Duckworth is a bit of a legend.

And David writes in, he recently took a pretty outspoken, though fair stand against exploitative, but nearly ubiquitous internships in theater. Has he received a lot of pushback from it? And do you think that there's actual change coming on that front? And David says, I'm a live theater worker right now and have considered making the jump to movies and TV. Do you have any recommendations on how to do that?

But would love to hear how just your stance on internships and being paid or unpaid? My eyes are honestly welling up because I... No, I really... You do this. And like I said, the one thing that I keep on harping on is trying to be invisible, try to be unseen. And for... Oh, I'm gonna cry. And to have people like recognize your work is especially,

you know, especially in a job that you are the last one invited to the party is pretty nice. Okay, I'm so sorry. I am so sorry. I love it. People love you and your work. Is that wonderful to know that you touch people that way just by doing the thing that you love to do the most?

Yeah, it's pretty crazy. It's... I'm one of the luckiest people I know to be totally honest with you. Yeah, I did get a lot of flack and I did get a lot of hate and I did get a lot of shunning because I said the theaters can't afford... Like, because we're moving into a new direction and theaters are going to try to take advantage of them not having a lot of money and say, well, we need interns and we need them for free.

Or even worse, there are places that say you have to pay to be an intern at this place. And that is criminal because we are artists telling other artists that their training is not worth, that artists aren't worth something. And it's something to get that from somebody else, but to get from the people that you respect, the people you admire to tell you you are not worth something is probably one of the most heinous things that we can do as artists.

If we don't support each other, the reason artists welcome those who are always outsiders is because we know what it is to be outsiders. And we are making great pains to create worlds that are safe for others, the people who are the others. And not to gatekeep our world by making it that you have to be so fiscally sound your family has to be so fiscally sound that you can depend on somebody else's money in order to get a proper education at some of the best places is total gatekeeping. And it's gatekeeping at its worst because it keeps people who are disadvantaged out.

And it's so important that someone in a position like yours who's so well respected and seasoned in what you do is bringing that up. Because a lot of people wouldn't maybe have the privilege to bring that up, but it's also a lot of flack that that's a big risk that you're taking. Yeah, yeah, but how dare we say that we're inclusive? How dare we say we speak for everyone or we want our theater to portray everyone and then gatekeep the next generation who has stories and who have voices that we have to hear?

I mean, how many indigenous theater pieces have you seen? How many Asian theater pieces you have you seen? The ones that I've worked on have just exploded. They were so good and people were dying to see these things. I'm talking about like soft power. And then there was David Byrne from the Talking Heads and Alex Timber directed Here Lies Love about Emelda Marcos that was just all Filipino. And it was so earth-shatteringly good.

People go to a doctor when they feel sick. People go to the theater to heal their soul. And the great thing about being a prop master, Ali, is you can also make the soapbox that you're going to talk from. And whether it just so, that's so perfect. But on that note, do you have any advice for people who look up to you, who love proptology, who would want to do this for a living? Any advice?

Yeah. Find your passion. Find what you're good at. Take inventory of what you're great at and what you're not so good at. And exploit the things you're good at. And find the opposite side of that. So if you're a carpenter, look for sewing skills. Or if you're a soft goods person or sewer, look to do sculpting.

If you're a sculptor, look to do casting. So that you have double the amounts of blades when you come into the fight. You have a phone on you that has a camera. Take pictures of everything you do through the process that you do it in order to show people like, this is what I started with. This is what I ended up with. And these were the problems that I had in between. And be crazy enough that people like you show up early and do good work.

That's it. And you will work for the rest of your life. That's so great. Be crazy enough that people like you show up early and do good work. That's it. I'm telling you, his life lessons are so good. And final listener question. Leah Ludovico, I think.

Beautiful. Beautiful rendition on my part. Do proptologists carry utility belts? And if so, what would you say are the essential items in a prop utility belt? Penny cutting scissors. The scissors that EMTs keep that you always have. Brushes, paint brushes that go from really fine to giant chip brushes that you can throw away. A hot glue gun with plenty of hot glue, a small container of wood glue, screws of various size,

a square, a combination square, a pencil, a pen, and a nail set. Perfect. Yep, that's it. That's it. And you're done. Okay, two more. I always ask. Worst thing about your job.

Thing that sucks the most. It can be anything. It can be petty. It can be huge. It can be anything. I think the thing that sucks the most is funding for the arts. It's the lack of money. But that does make you more creative.

The other thing, so that's the politically correct one that I'm going to say. The other thing is people who believe that they are important. And the thing about working at the public theater is there are so many. I mean, Meryl Streep started there. Al Pacino started there. There's a history. I mean, hair, a chorus line, fun home, Hamilton, all these incredible, incredible plays. So you are walking amongst giants.

And a lot of the great things about the public is that there are no egos. And if you come into that place with an ego, you will be shut down and crushed. And that's great. And people who do try that get shut down and crushed. People who believe that they are more important. There was a director who was sitting, who will remain nameless. One of the backstage crew said, I really, really appreciate what you're doing with this show. It's great to see so many talented people creating such great art.

And the director says, oh, my God, thank you so much. I've been waiting for your approval this entire time. Oh, God. And everybody was just like waiting to kill this guy. Of course, it was a white man. So, yeah. So that's what that's what that's what what stinks. Yeah.

Okay. Well, then easy question. What do you love the most about being a proptologist? The gasps, the magic when it happens. And people are like, how do you do that? There is a magic table in tempest. And the director was like, we probably can't do this because there's a limited amount of money. I was like, no, we can do it.

I said, you just give me one second where people pass by this table. And food will appear. And I said, if you give me a second one, I will give them glasses. And she was like, OK, let's do it. And it's seamless. And you can see that happen or like the breaking of the wall, you know, it's the things that, you know, that people see that are that it's the magic. It's the magic.

And it's it makes me feel like a kid again, you know, to to show somebody something that kind of blows them away and makes them feel wonder again. Oh, you're doing it all the time. You're amazing. You are wonderful. Thank you. I'm going to make you be friends with me forever. Deal with it.

Totally. Totally. Pinky swear right now. Here you go. So ask prop masters improper questions because life is short and they are wise. And you'll never look at any object the same way. So follow, follow, follow Jay Duckworth at the links in the show notes. He is Proptologist on TikTok.

His website is Proptologist.com. He is Jay Duck 9 on Instagram and Twitter. He also has an Etsy shop called Professor Duckworth's Unique Goods for Uncommon Folks. And he has a red bubble filled with charming and hilarious t-shirt designs. And he is at Proptologist on that. We are at oligies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Allie Ward with 1L on both. There's oligiesmerch available at oligiesmerch.com.

Thank you, Shannon Feltas and Bonnie Dutch of the Comedy Podcast. You are that for Managing Merch. Also, side note, quick plug for future oligie guest Rose Eveleth's Flash Forward Book, which comes out this week. There's more info at flashforwardpod.com slash book. I'll link that in the show notes because y'all love Rose Eveleth and so do I. And I'm so excited for her. Thank you, Erin Talbert for managing the oligies podcast Facebook group.

Thank you, Noel Dilworth and Susan Hale for managing so much behind the scenes. Or in the collections, if you will. Thank you, Emily White of the Wordery for making transcripts available at allieward.com slash oligies-extras. Caleb Patton bleeps them. Professional hunk and editor Jared Sleeper and the mustachioed master Stephen Ray Morris put all these pieces together and also happy belated birthday to Stephen Ray Morris, which was last week.

Happy, happy birthday. We're so glad you exist. And also to my dear friend Colleen Flanagan and my niece Olivia, Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music each week. And I confess my heart to you at the end of the episode. I tell you secret after the credits. And I need to tell you this week's secret is that I started to ask Jay a question about starting from scratch.

And where are you getting most of your stuff? Do you have to start? Do you have to start from scratch? And he thought I must have like really done my research because I sell shirts on Redbubble under proptologists. But when you said that thing, and I don't know if it's going to be edited out, but I made a shirt that said Shark Week. Remember when you said Shark earlier?

And I was like, because I was like, that's always been sitting in back of my mind, but I always wanted to have a shirt that said that. And saw it over the Redbubble store just so I could make a shirt for that. Oh, it's going to stay in now. Wonderful. And with that, we'll see you back next week. Bye bye.